Living on the edge in the North Pacific....with two kids, two dogs, a manic husband and a wife who tries to keep up with the pack.

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Thursday, March 08, 2012

Camera Realization

I just realized that ever since Thanksgiving I have had my Pentax point-and-shoot camera set at 1040 by 640 pixel dimensions for all pictures. No wonder I have been so disapointed with its pictures of late! I noticed something was definitely up when I took those mountain goat pictures while skiing the other day (see blog post for February 28th). But at the time i could not figure out what was wrong. I thought the '1040' picture setting was for the camera's video.

And then yesterday I took this picture (I take this same picture all winter long so I can compare how the snow cover changes), and I noticed that the picture is only 1040 pixels wide. I went back and looked at all the photos I've taken with the camera and noticed that the camera was still taking big res pictures at the Phoenix airport at Thanksgiving, but small res pictures at the pool a few hours later. So that is when I inadvertently changed it. I bet I was trying to change the video quality!

The funny thing is that I was convinced the camera had 'gotten old', and had almost completely shifted to using Zoya's Panasonic waterproof camera. I'd even been telling people that the Panasonic camera took 'WAY better' photos than the Pentax. Little did I know that it was all operator error. The good thing about all this is that I have brought new life and confidence to an old camera, and now Zoya can have her camera back. It also made me realize that cameras are only as good as their operators! Patrick